


Her... and her

by qwertysweetea



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angsty Doctor (Doctor Who), F/M, Past Relationship(s), Platonic Soulmates, Reminiscing, The Doctor on His Own
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 04:56:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8476225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwertysweetea/pseuds/qwertysweetea
Summary: If he asked for any one of them, of any era, the TARDIS could show him them... and a face could bring back anything. Everything, even! Fill in the details in his mind, and then there was limitless possibility. He could find her. They could go on more adventures. She could live.“Voice interface activated.”“Show me Clara."Peri stared back.





	

The thought hit the Doctor the moment he heard the door click shut behind him. He closed his eyes and remembered back to a time in his last regeneration, blurred with pain as he faced his death, and how the crushing loneliness of the thought, had driven him to beg the TARDIS for a single friendly face to share it with.

If he asked for any one of them, of any era, the TARDIS could show him them.

He ran to the controls ungracefully and flipped the lever dramatically in a way that would have made his past two regenerations proud. Hands sweating and hearts beating out their own dramatic music, he couldn't help but allow the small flutter of celebration to overcome him.

A face could bring back anything. Everything, even! Fill in the details in his mind, and then there was the limitless possibility. He could find her. Maybe with renewed faith they could do… something. She could go home a have a normal human life. They could go on more adventures. She could live.

"Voice interface activated."

"Show me Clara!" He declared.

It flicked through several faces a-second separated by a static like he hadn't seen since Earth television back in the 1980s. They were too fast even for him to completely separate them. If Clara was in there somewhere he wouldn't have known.

"You're a sophisticated piece of Timelord machinery for goodness sake! Show me Clara!"

It flittered again, flashing too fast between two faces for him to make out either before it settled on one.

Peri stared back, eyes as wide as he remembered and that contented little smile playing on the corner of her lips. She was wearing the outfit she had when he had regenerated. The outfit she would have died in had it not been for his fifth self. The first face his sixth regeneration had seen. A reflection of Clara to his twelfth self in ways which he had allowed to slip through his mind without a few single sparks of warning.

"Voice interface activated." The interface replied in her sharp American accent.

"That is not Clara!" He shouted back, still only just managing to suppress the desperation in his voice. "That is not Clara. I know you have her somewhere in there! Show me her!"

The static took over again before coming to a rest on Peri once more.

Peri had been the other. The only other.

They fought, really fought. He fought with her like he hadn't with anybody else on Earth. He had been crueler to her than he thought he could have been to any of the others too, and she took it all on the chin like traveling with him was worth every moment.

Strong, almost unbreakable. More so than she was ever given credit for.

He could almost say that he had been in love with Peri. He loved her, of course. He had loved Jo, and Liz, and Jamie, and Ace, and Leela, and every single one of them… but he was comfortable in the mind that he, with thousands of years of potential and hundreds of history, could be completely in love with the Earth girl who had managed to overcome the structure of her entire culture and treat him in every way that he desired to be treated.

She challenged him in a way that made him question his own intellect and bore her teeth while they argued like nothing was more important winning when his ego couldn't handle the hit. She inflated his importance with pointless questions she didn't care about the answer to and allowed him to lead her into the adventure when she longed to be the one to drag him.

Then there was her. Her… with her little brunette bob cut and wide eyes. He'd forgotten how good it felt to travel with that perfect understanding: a breath of fresh air amongst the stifling human presence.

Clara had been like her in so many ways but he had not allowed himself to see it. Now with a huge overbearing absence of all those things, that is all he could see. The memories weren't side-by-side, drawing upon each other like they would have had he had the sense to do so earlier, but it was undeniably there.

They were a pair: Peri and Clara.

"You're exactly like her. Of course, you had to be… You took one of my most disagreeable selves and you tolerated me. No, more than that! You had to want to put me in my place, to make me kind, to motivate me to become a better version of myself.

"You had to understand me; you had to be so in tune with what I wanted that living with you was effortless, domestic bliss. You had to guide me into place with your constant little judgments and corrections and nagging that I wondered how I ever got by without you.

"So grateful, like flying with me was the best gift in the world. Like throwing you into the path of danger is the best type of life you could afford. You couldn't be content with a normal life, could you? A normal, boring human partner who would convince you that you wanted children, and 'ooh look at me I'm a scientist! Let's move to the Amazon and live happily ever after!' You couldn't just accept that, could you?

"No. You had to buy a new toothbrush for the TARDIS, and Hell, why not bring along the lucky teddy too so he doesn't get lonely in your little, rented room. Sure, bring along your homework too, you'd better get that done between facing fantastical new worlds and creatures."

He paused, clenching his hands together to keep them from trembling. He allowed his thumb to graze his knuckles, bruise-less through the punishment he had put them through on the outside of the diner before he could bring himself to go in. Just another reminder that he was one of them.

"I set you up as perfect collateral damage for the Timelord's in another one of their poorly planned out political processes, and look at you… still smiling back like you're grateful...

"Well, what about me?! What am I going to do now?"

He'd lost track of who he was talking to, he wasn't so completely sure that he had any control over what he was saying at that point either. The words were coming out in sharp and long exclamations before he had even turned them into comprehensible thoughts, and the last one had surprised him to near silence; near silence, because the words gave way to a pant of disbelief.

"What am I going to do now? Peri? Clara? Tell me…"

"I am not Clara. I am a voice interface."

The pain overcame him in a way it hasn't since her death, or her death… either of theirs, really. Both. It didn't matter. It was like whatever he had wrapped those moments in to protect himself from the pain had ruptured and all the loss, guilt, failure and hurt from those moments were pooling into him. It swelled in his limbs and solidified in his joints. It was paralysing.

He leant back against the control panel, hand over his mouth and eyes focused on the ground under the hologram's feet.

"Tell me what to do now." He finished "Tell me how I'm supposed to do this without you" and in _you_ he placed all the feelings he had ever had for both of those precious earth girls: her corrections and nagging, her motivation and enthusiasm, her grounding thoughts, her ego-boosting questions. The suspense in her touch, the wonder and amazement in her eyes, the sternness in her voice. Her company. Her love. Her presence. Her existence.

"I am not Clara." A voice replied soft, and clear, and so completely English. It fit so perfectly in the void in his mind. It belonged there, and there was no doubt in his mind that it was hers. It couldn't have been anyone else's but hers. "I am a voice interface."


End file.
